11 ms·

The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort of issue. It used to be that if you weren't happy with a purchase, you could return any item you bought

by rmatt2000 4y ago

The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort of issue. It used to be that if you weren't happy with a purchase, you could return any item you bought from Bean, at any time, for a full refund. One day, the CEO of the company donated some of his old LL Bean clothing to a charity that accepts used clothing. One of the shirts he donated had his initials embroidered on it. In less than a month, that same shirt had been returned to Bean, stating the person was unsatisfied with his purchase, and requesting a full refund of the purchase price.

SnowHill9902 4y ago
Interesting. Reference?
- valleyer 4y ago
  https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-me-state-wire-us-news-4e20f82acbc948969a98e7151b4d1622 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-...
  - aardvarkr 4y ago
    OP delivers! Thanks :)
Spooky23 4y ago
Walmart did something like this for many years. They were required to satisfy customers and would accept almost anything as a return to exchange. Like LL Bean, the internet kinda ruined it and when the management turned over to newer people who didn’t share the commitment that the founder had, it went away.
- bfuller 4y ago
  Sears used to take clothing back and replace it if it had any wear on it. In the 90s I bought a couple pairs of jeans at sears and just kept replacing them until they stopped doing that.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
It's odd they don't have some automated system to verify the returner actually purchased that item (or at least one of its model #). If yes, proceed with RMA. If no, "sorry our records show you never purchased that item".
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Buy a new one, return the old one saying it was the new one... free conversion of old to new.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Macy’s tears the tag, adds a red “sold tag,” and enters the number into their system, so you can’t just grab something off the rack, and return it. This was because people would grab something off the rack, tear off the tags, take it to the register, and request a refund. It wasn’t even shoplifting.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    I noticed socks I bought from Uniqlo had an RFID tag in the label. Maybe that's for the same reason? They know which items haven't been sold.
    - csydas 4y ago
      It's one aspect. Uniqlo also uses them for faster ring ups at the counter. They just stack you items over the reader and it gets every tag nice and fast with a final sight check by the cashier that they got everything. I'm not sure but I think it has a weight systém also to help with catching missed items but this I might be wrong on.
    - __float 4y ago
      It's (also?) used for self-checkout: put all of the items in a box, and it tallies up your total automatically, without scanning individual items.
  - bluedino 4y ago
dmckeon 4y ago
When LL Bean started, 90% of his boots were returned, and the purchases refunded - which gave Bean the opportunity to analyze how the boots had failed, redesign them, and send new boots to his dissatisfied customers. Apparent MVP failure becomes better engineering becomes marketing and research. Find out what your users/customers want. sources: posted on the store wall in Freeport, and https://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/lessons-learned-leon-leonwood-bean https://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/lessons-learned-...
- ghaff 4y ago
  A number of retailers--REI is another--have pulled back considerably from essentially no questions asked return policies. I've wondered to what degree it is generally more poorly-made goods given that most come from the same Asian factories anyway and to what degree it is a generational shift where more people (though there's always been a subset) will just take advantage of any system they can.
  - blfr 4y ago
    Not just a generational change but a move to lower trust society.
  - acdha 4y ago
    I think the internet has a lot of credit here: there were always scammers but you wouldn’t have had an outdoors magazine publish a column suggesting that you buy something you can’t afford, use it for your trip, and return it because that’s cheaper than renting. That was disturbingly common online prior to REI changing their policies – and you’d see people suggesting it for big items like kayaks or expedition-sized tents, where selling it at the used gear sale was a substantial haircut. One downside to sharing information easily is that attacks not only get better faster but also that it can hit the “everyone’s doing it!” norm where people start shifting how they feel about it.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >“everyone’s doing it!” norm where people start shifting how they feel about it. Yeah. A lot of people won't do something that they think is sort of scummy if they only know one person who does it--and he's sort of an asshole. But when there's a whole subreddit devoted to the behavior, they may start to think they're the sucker if they don't do what "everyone else" is doing. And unfortunately with outdoor gear, I've definitely had fairly expensive outdoor gear fail catastrophically after a few years even though it had only been gently used a handful of times. That said, I suspect LL Bean and REI still have some flexibility. I did just have Patagonia credit me for a somewhat older jacket that had completely delaminated--of course their normal prices are so high I'm not sure I'll even use the credit.
dspillett 4y ago
> The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort Clothing retailers and similar have seen this sort of thing a lot, even before online shopping was a significant part of their trade. > Another issue, called ‘wardrobing’ is where a customer buys something to use once and then return A colleague of mine some years ago used to wear designer shirts and such to company social events. At one point he asked me how I afford as much tech as I bought¹ and I referenced his designer clothes² with the notion that we just prioritise our spending differently with most of my clothes being relatively bargain basement stuff³. In response to this he told me that he wore most of it only once, and returned it within a week or two of purchase as unused, so it cost him relatively little. This was not just mail-order catalogue purchases⁴ but physical stores too where he sometimes had to return items to the same real person he'd bought them from and did so repeatedly. This coloured my impression of his trustworthyness considerably - I have no love for the retail industry but that seems rather low. He said a lot of people do it, which I doubted the scale of at the time but maybe I was somewhat naive there⁵. My overly long-winded point being that this has been a thing for decades. The internet just makes it easier, makes learning the tricks to defraud the trade easier, and because open returns policies are often a selling point for an online retailer (for obvious reasons) makes those tricks relevant to a wider gamut of products & price ranges, which might not have had such returns policies in the past. The growth in social media and it's influence on how much we see of others outside of our close circles probably makes a big difference where fashion is concerned too. ---- [1] it turned out part of this was that my salary was larger than his by more than either of us realised, another factor was how much he spent otherwise trying to impress marks when "on the pull" and how often this expensive hobby happened! [2] and his taste for expensive whiskey, but that isn't relevant to this thread! [3] no personal value judgement being made here, I understand what people get psychologically (and sometimes physically!) from improving their outward image, I just have different priorities which doesn't make me more or less right just different [4] internet shopping proper was only just starting to be significant for everyday fashion at the time, assuming what little I know of such shopping is accurate [5] he also pointed out, when I failed to disguise my discomfort in the idea, my habit at the time of downloading TV instead of waiting months/years for it to be broadcast or available to buy on tape/DVD in this country, which I admit was a valid comparison. I know my life has been some points sort of 100% morally clean!
bluedino 4y ago
Costco seems like it's the current place that people abuse the return system at
- genericlogic 4y ago
  One major difference is that Costco requires a membership. It seems like a bad actor could be effectively banned.
fmajid 4y ago
The solution to that is simple: require the original purchase receipt. The return policy changes are just an excuse, the real reason is the new management (often private equity vultures) plans on performing Quality Fade, i.e. lowering the quality but keeping prices high as they run down the formerly deserved reputation into the ground. Of course that strategy won't work without also gutting the warranty.

SnowHill9902 4y ago

Interesting. Reference?

valleyer 4y ago
https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-me-state-wire-us-news-4e20f82acbc948969a98e7151b4d1622 https://apnews.com/article/north-america-lifestyle-business-...
- aardvarkr 4y ago
  OP delivers! Thanks :)

Spooky23 4y ago

Walmart did something like this for many years. They were required to satisfy customers and would accept almost anything as a return to exchange. Like LL Bean, the internet kinda ruined it and when the management turned over to newer people who didn’t share the commitment that the founder had, it went away.

bfuller 4y ago
Sears used to take clothing back and replace it if it had any wear on it. In the 90s I bought a couple pairs of jeans at sears and just kept replacing them until they stopped doing that.

SkyMarshal 4y ago

It's odd they don't have some automated system to verify the returner actually purchased that item (or at least one of its model #). If yes, proceed with RMA. If no, "sorry our records show you never purchased that item".

cortesoft 4y ago
Buy a new one, return the old one saying it was the new one... free conversion of old to new.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Macy’s tears the tag, adds a red “sold tag,” and enters the number into their system, so you can’t just grab something off the rack, and return it. This was because people would grab something off the rack, tear off the tags, take it to the register, and request a refund. It wasn’t even shoplifting.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  I noticed socks I bought from Uniqlo had an RFID tag in the label. Maybe that's for the same reason? They know which items haven't been sold.
  - csydas 4y ago
    It's one aspect. Uniqlo also uses them for faster ring ups at the counter. They just stack you items over the reader and it gets every tag nice and fast with a final sight check by the cashier that they got everything. I'm not sure but I think it has a weight systém also to help with catching missed items but this I might be wrong on.
  - __float 4y ago
    It's (also?) used for self-checkout: put all of the items in a box, and it tallies up your total automatically, without scanning individual items.
- bluedino 4y ago

dmckeon 4y ago

When LL Bean started, 90% of his boots were returned, and the purchases refunded - which gave Bean the opportunity to analyze how the boots had failed, redesign them, and send new boots to his dissatisfied customers. Apparent MVP failure becomes better engineering becomes marketing and research. Find out what your users/customers want. sources: posted on the store wall in Freeport, and https://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/lessons-learned-leon-leonwood-bean https://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/lessons-learned-...

ghaff 4y ago
A number of retailers--REI is another--have pulled back considerably from essentially no questions asked return policies. I've wondered to what degree it is generally more poorly-made goods given that most come from the same Asian factories anyway and to what degree it is a generational shift where more people (though there's always been a subset) will just take advantage of any system they can.
- blfr 4y ago
  Not just a generational change but a move to lower trust society.
- acdha 4y ago
  I think the internet has a lot of credit here: there were always scammers but you wouldn’t have had an outdoors magazine publish a column suggesting that you buy something you can’t afford, use it for your trip, and return it because that’s cheaper than renting. That was disturbingly common online prior to REI changing their policies – and you’d see people suggesting it for big items like kayaks or expedition-sized tents, where selling it at the used gear sale was a substantial haircut. One downside to sharing information easily is that attacks not only get better faster but also that it can hit the “everyone’s doing it!” norm where people start shifting how they feel about it.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >“everyone’s doing it!” norm where people start shifting how they feel about it. Yeah. A lot of people won't do something that they think is sort of scummy if they only know one person who does it--and he's sort of an asshole. But when there's a whole subreddit devoted to the behavior, they may start to think they're the sucker if they don't do what "everyone else" is doing. And unfortunately with outdoor gear, I've definitely had fairly expensive outdoor gear fail catastrophically after a few years even though it had only been gently used a handful of times. That said, I suspect LL Bean and REI still have some flexibility. I did just have Patagonia credit me for a somewhat older jacket that had completely delaminated--of course their normal prices are so high I'm not sure I'll even use the credit.

dspillett 4y ago

> The clothing company LL Bean dealt with this same sort Clothing retailers and similar have seen this sort of thing a lot, even before online shopping was a significant part of their trade. > Another issue, called ‘wardrobing’ is where a customer buys something to use once and then return A colleague of mine some years ago used to wear designer shirts and such to company social events. At one point he asked me how I afford as much tech as I bought¹ and I referenced his designer clothes² with the notion that we just prioritise our spending differently with most of my clothes being relatively bargain basement stuff³. In response to this he told me that he wore most of it only once, and returned it within a week or two of purchase as unused, so it cost him relatively little. This was not just mail-order catalogue purchases⁴ but physical stores too where he sometimes had to return items to the same real person he'd bought them from and did so repeatedly. This coloured my impression of his trustworthyness considerably - I have no love for the retail industry but that seems rather low. He said a lot of people do it, which I doubted the scale of at the time but maybe I was somewhat naive there⁵. My overly long-winded point being that this has been a thing for decades. The internet just makes it easier, makes learning the tricks to defraud the trade easier, and because open returns policies are often a selling point for an online retailer (for obvious reasons) makes those tricks relevant to a wider gamut of products & price ranges, which might not have had such returns policies in the past. The growth in social media and it's influence on how much we see of others outside of our close circles probably makes a big difference where fashion is concerned too. ---- [1] it turned out part of this was that my salary was larger than his by more than either of us realised, another factor was how much he spent otherwise trying to impress marks when "on the pull" and how often this expensive hobby happened! [2] and his taste for expensive whiskey, but that isn't relevant to this thread! [3] no personal value judgement being made here, I understand what people get psychologically (and sometimes physically!) from improving their outward image, I just have different priorities which doesn't make me more or less right just different [4] internet shopping proper was only just starting to be significant for everyday fashion at the time, assuming what little I know of such shopping is accurate [5] he also pointed out, when I failed to disguise my discomfort in the idea, my habit at the time of downloading TV instead of waiting months/years for it to be broadcast or available to buy on tape/DVD in this country, which I admit was a valid comparison. I know my life has been some points sort of 100% morally clean!

bluedino 4y ago

Costco seems like it's the current place that people abuse the return system at

genericlogic 4y ago
One major difference is that Costco requires a membership. It seems like a bad actor could be effectively banned.

fmajid 4y ago

The solution to that is simple: require the original purchase receipt. The return policy changes are just an excuse, the real reason is the new management (often private equity vultures) plans on performing Quality Fade, i.e. lowering the quality but keeping prices high as they run down the formerly deserved reputation into the ground. Of course that strategy won't work without also gutting the warranty.